NORTHAMPTON — Eighty years ago this week, a child mailed in a single coin to the Gazette, “tightly folded in a piece of a paper,” according to a newspaper account at the time. The money, the child wrote that Thanksgiving week, was for “the poor children” to have something during the holidays. Weeks later, on Dec. 19, 1933, a larger …

NORTHAMPTON — The memory of watching his mother count a handful of crisp bills some 80 years ago is an image as vivid in Roger E. King’s mind today as it was during the height of the Depression. “As her nosy 6-year-old son, I watched bug-eyed as she counted out the 10, crisp $5 bills,” said King, who lived in …